We Have Trams in Surry Hills

“This would never happen in Melbourne”, I heard someone say, with disdain, to his friend. I then watched him look around the carriage with a general “sneer”.

“Clearly they were from Melbourne, and clearly they were tram nerds”, I thought to myself. What was the issue? There was a slight delay in the doors opening. FFS.

After waiting days, weeks, months, years, decades for the new tram in my neighbourhood, and having lived through night-time construction works, I was pretty bloody pleased that, at last, today, they’re picking up passengers. For me, a five second delay on the doors opening on Day 1 was, if anything, a relief. It could have been worse.

Though I didn’t really need to (I live close to the city), I caught the tram twice today: both times to and from Central Station.

As it’s a novelty, and as they’re free this weekend, the trams were packed.

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5 Replies to “We Have Trams in Surry Hills”

About 100 seats, I heard, and an awful lot of standing space. It is so absurdly slow with such poor traffic light priority, I wonder if it will quite as successful as I thought. ‘Though mention has been made of it becoming faster over time, how can it be so slow when it mostly doesn’t mix with traffic, with the existing bus service taking 35 minutes to the Quay as against the tram’s 50 minutes. Still, all quite exciting.

Congratulations! Finally you Sydneysiders have seen the light and have rediscovered the joy of tramming.

I remember running into an old lady as I was lugging my luggage towards the Escherium which is Central station a couple of years ago. The task of finding my way into the labyrinth wasn’t made any easier by having to navigate around the tram works. ‘We had them fifty years ago,’ she confided to me vociferously as she pointed me towards the Tænarian portal. ‘Now they’re bringing them back! They should never have got rid of them!’

Though born and raised on Widjabul land (Lismore), for the most part this blog is written on Gadigal land (Sydney). I am proud to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. I pay my respect to Elders past, present and emerging.